Laptop to IDE connector

[jward52]

My daughter's Compaq 2100US laptop uses a Toshiba hard drive. Does anyone know of a adapter that will hook that drive to a desktop IDE ribbon cable? The one I have from Cables To Go does not fit. Do laptop drives from different vendors use a different type of connection? I have seen some different ones on several web sites but have no list of what drives they fit.
Thanks!
Jim

 

[Blujacket]

I've changed a number of 2.5" drives out of Notebooks and outside of the thickness they have all been the same in the cabling. I use 2 of the adapters in a Desktop case for cloning one to another.

http://www.computergate.com/products/item.cfm?prodcd=XMKHD2

http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchdetail.asp?T1=161+0405

They usually come with drive rails to put into a 3.5" bay or case.

 

[jward52]

Thanks, Blue! I ordered the adapter from computergate. Meanwhile, I'm running the restore software on it since she needs it tomorrow. Maybe this time she will pay attention when I tell her about ways to do backups!

 

[Blujacket]

You're welcome, glad to help. We'll keep our fingers crossed for luck with the backup education.

 

[micker377]

Did you remove the hard drive from the "caddy"? The "caddy" is the holder that fits the hard drive to the computer. The adapter fits the "bare" hard drive. 2.5 drives are all the same (like IDE drives are all alike).

 

[jward52]

The Compaq 2100us HDD has no caddy. The reason for removing it and trying to copy files was, I found out today, that my college-student daughter's laptop was an apparent victim of a variant of the "witty worm" that attacks BlackIce and RealSecure-firewalled PCs. It was unbootable, so I used the recovery console and the fixmbr command. Then it would boot only to the hdd but wouldn't run any software. The worm had destroyed her files. It would, however, boot to her usb floppy drive when that was attached, from which I could then run the xp boot floppy set, use her XP cd to format the hdd, then run the restore cd set. That sure was fun!
Thanks to all who responded to my post!
Jim